The Doctor and the Sick
Image: Martineric @ Flickr
Mark 2:13-17 Expand passage
13Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
We live in a crazy world today. If you were to go to a doctors’ surgery or hospital there are signs up everywhere telling you to go home if you have the symptoms of swine flu. Those who are ill are those the doctors do not want to see. We are literally turning around Jesus’ words in one sense; it’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick, but in another way we are repeating in a physical way today the point Jesus was making about Spiritual health 2000 years ago. Our doctors will send sick people away without seeing them, hoping that they will somehow get better on their own, and fortunately due to the way Swine Flu has developed this has been the case, but many predictions were far worse. One early estimate which was on the pessimistic side of things stated up to 1,000,000,000 lives may be lost to Swine Flu, and still we send these people home, still our doctors made the call to not see them.
Two thousand years ago another group of people were responsible for the well being of a nation’s health. The teachers of the law were responsible not for the physical health of a nation but for the far more demanding task of looking after its religious and spiritual well being. Just as our doctors are today sending the sick home, so to did the teachers of the law send their sick people (sinners) home. They refused to associate with these people for fear of being contaminated by the sin, for fear of being seen in a lesser light, for fear of becoming someone who others would then want to avoid.
When Jesus spoke to a tax collector he was speaking with what was regarded as the worst form of sinner; more than just sinning these people were traitors, working for the evil Roman Empire, getting rich of the misery of the country. More than talking with these people Jesus went for a meal with them. He broke bread with them, ate food with them. The Pharisees watching would have seen this as more than a meal, in their eyes this was Jesus accepting their behaviour and condoning it. They could practically see the sin being transferred from these men onto Jesus. In their eyes the tax collectors were coughing and spluttering their germs all over everyone they met, and this was more so when they ate together. Jesus was catching their swine flu. He was catching their sin.
Jesus was not doing something new, however; there was not new ground being broken. Mindsets which had developed were being reset though. Moses, one of the great heroes of the faith, had been brought up a non-Jewish home, married a non-Jew, and yet was not considered to be a sinner by association. Esther and Daniel, amongst others, lived in exile among gentiles, and were not considered tainted by their sin. Somewhere along the way things got confused and it became ‘universally accepted’ that if you spent time with sinners, if you ate with sinners, that you to some degree took on their sin. This is not scriptural, it is not from God, it is something man concocted, a way of the religious elite keeping power, elevating them over society, and ultimately this was undermining the plan that God had for these people. The only way to heal the sickness, was for the doctor to walk amongst them.
The Pharisees misunderstand Jesus. They do not understand who Jesus is, or what he has come to do. Too often in our lives we misunderstand things. We downplay the role that Jesus should be playing in the situation. So often we assume we know what to do when we are merely acting out of human tradition. The world says this is ok and that’s not so its what I will believe, but if we don’t run things through scripture and ask Jesus what’s right and what’s wrong we will lose our moral compass. We need to ensure that everything we do is done using more than just our worldly views. There is an illness far worse than swine flu rife in this world, an illness with much more severe consequences than earthly death. Sin – sin requires a doctor, sin requires nursing from the followers of the doctor. As Jesus’ followers we need to be going into the places that the world would not, mixing with people that the world has given up on, and bringing them some of Jesus’ hope and love. The world may not understand why we are doing this, they may think we will be infected by these people, but this is the path Jesus walked, this is the path Jesus had called us to walk. We are called to go out and bring the sick to the doctor that they, like us, may be cured.
One Response
Leave a Reply
What's On Crossring
Crossring is a community of Christians who meet together online in fellowship around the Christian faith and the Bible.
As part of our active lifestyle of prayer and Bible reading, we are currently reading a small section of the Bible together each day and sharing our responses to it with each other. We also publish a short devotional thought on a key verse or two from each day's passage to prompt prayer or reflection.
Community
Please feel free to browse the website. If you wish to participate in the Forums, however, you will need to login or register with us to help keep the spammers at bay.
On the Forums
Reply To: Communion etiquette
by Phill Sacre 19:57 18/10/11
Communion etiquette
by lordkenley 21:20 17/10/11
Driscoll: "Got Hates You"
by Phill Sacre 21:09 11/10/11
Reply To: Prayers of praise: let's praise together!
by Martin Laker 05:43 03/10/11
Reply To: Blindfolded monkeys and Christian songs
by Phill Sacre 14:33 29/09/11
Crossring on Facebook
Crossring on Twitter
Whole Site RSS
Well said… there aren’t enough people willing to take the leap.